Palestinians drive amid the rubble of buildings destroyed in an Israeli air strike in Rafah, in the southern Gaza strip on 12 October 2023. Picture: AFP/Said Khatib
Said Khatib, a Palestinian photojournalist working for Agence France-Presse (AFP), was awarded Spain’s prestigious Mingote Prize last week at a ceremony attended by King Felipe VI for a Gaza photograph taken in October 2023.
He was presented with the award by ABC newspaper, which runs Spain’s vaunted journalism prize, for a picture of two children looking through the window of a car driving past rubble in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
The image was taken on October 12, just five days after Hamas militants stormed over the border into southern Israel in an unprecedented deadly attack that triggered the ongoing Gaza war.
The Mingote Prize, which is awarded annually by a jury of Spanish journalists, is one of the highest industry honours in Spain but rarely awarded to someone who is not from the Spanish-speaking world.
“The most recent of Khatib’s photos to be published expose the suffering of the civilian population… They capture the difficulties faced by the most vulnerable in this conflict,” said ABC in naming him the winner in May.
Khatib, who studied at Gaza’s Al-Azhar University, has worked for AFP since 2003.
The Gaza war began with Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel which resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
The militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom are still in Gaza, including 42 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel responded with an offensive that has killed at least 38,983 people, also mostly civilians, according to health ministry figures from Hamas-run Gaza.
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